


do not attack the reflection you cannot recognize; it is still only you staring back

by cjones7



Series: Riverdale Daemon AU [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Blossoms are their own warning, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Cheryl is an unreliable narrator, Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Gender Issues, Implied/Referenced Incest, Not Ship focused, Physical Abuse, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexuality Crisis, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, season one AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjones7/pseuds/cjones7
Summary: Cheryl sits in front of her mirror to apply her makeup, and her thoughts scream “liar.”
Relationships: Cheryl Blossom/Jason Blossom, Jason Blossom/Polly Cooper
Series: Riverdale Daemon AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568026
Kudos: 19





	do not attack the reflection you cannot recognize; it is still only you staring back

**Author's Note:**

> Please bear with Cheryl she's been brainwashed her entire life. She's doing her best, it's just her best is really, really bad. (Ships only vaguely referenced and only tagged for courtesy's sake. This is not a ship fic.)

Cheryl sits in front of her mirror to apply her makeup, and her thoughts scream “ _liar_.” She sits and sculpts her eyebrows and her thoughts scream “ _liar_. ” She applies her foundation and “ _liar_ ”, she paints on her lipstick, meticulous and faultless and “ _Cheryl you know you’re a liar_ ”, mascara and eyeshadow and “ _an unrepentant liar_ ”, picks up her hairbrush and Oberon, sitting in the shape of a little grey squirrel, whispers under his breath, “liar.” Cheryl smacks her soul across the room and does not wince at the bloom of pain in the middle of her back. She has grown used to it.

When a daemon isn’t settled by the time you’re nearly eighteen, well, people ask questions. When a daemon doesn’t settle by the time you’re nearly eighteen and your twin brother’s settled when he was thirteen, people ask a lot of questions. So Cheryl draws attention to deflect attention. So Cheryl made a choice at 13, and continues to make it every day. When Jason’s daemon (Titania to her Oberon, mommy and daddy Blossom always thinking they’re so clever, with their perfect matching set) settled in her stately greyhound from, Cheryl made a choice. No one would question a little blue dart frog from them. No one would expect anything less than something beautiful and deadly. She was sure Oberon would settle any day now. She was sure there would not be much to explain. She was sure keeping up the image of glossy Blossom perfection outweighed any risks.

But then she turned 14, and Oberon hadn’t settled. And then 15, and he hadn’t settled. And 16, and still--he changed the minute they were alone. And then 17, and she knew she must be insane. And then 17, and Jason, (her Jason, her matching set, Titiana to her Oberon, her Blossom Twin, because Blossoms are born in pairs for a reason Cheryl, You’d do well to remember your place in relation to your brother Cheryl, Jason who seems to have more of her soul in her than she herself does much of the time--) asked for her help to run away with pretty Polly Cooper. Polly and her dove, Jason and his greyhound. Purity and loyalty. Things Cheryl lost, and maybe never had. But he was her Jason, her twin, her predestined love, so how could she say no?

Traditionally, the Blossoms bury their dead with a little vial of the fine gold Dust their daemons dissolve into at the moment of death. When Jason washes up on the banks of the Sweetwater, bullet hole square in the middle of his forehead, all traces of Titania are washed away. All traces of their matching set.

When Jason is found dead, Oberon waits until they are alone, and shifts into a big, grand bird with sharp, cruel claws (a Harpy Eagle, Harpies for vengeance, to punish those who harm their closest kin. Cheryl knows her symbolism.), and rakes them down Cheryl’s arm. Cheryl sits and stares into her mirror, letting the blood soak into her dress as Oberon shifts into a mink, limping heavily. Serves him right, Cheryl thinks, as she stares at everything and nothing.

After Jason is found dead, but before the funeral, when Thornhill is empty and still as the tomb it is, Cheryl slips in to Jason’s room, and into his clothes. She did not bother with the makeup, not today, not for this. She puts on his red suit, the one he wore to prom with pretty Polly, and tucks her hair up in a ballcap, and imagines a life where she was Jason, and he was Cheryl. They did this when they were young, Nana Rose confused, using them as sweet, interchangeable dolls. But now it’s just Cheryl, alone, or--now it is Jason, alone, or--it is some kind of hybrid, not Cheryl and not Jason, not a perfect golden boy and not a broken little girl but something Else, something that could run away with a pretty girl and survive, not like the real Jason, not like the real Cheryl. They could never love anyone properly, not even each other. Oberon is next to her, so preoccupied with mimicking his lost Titania’s greyhound form that they do not hear Penelope open the door.

Later, when Cheryl is soothing scratches on her neck from her mother’s serval daemon (Agamemnon. And again, Cheryl knows her symbolism.) and their words echo in her mind “I knew you were wrong, I knew you were crazy, I knew you were nothing, would be nothing, but a horrid little girl all your days.”, Cheryl wonders how one is supposed to ever settle, when they are never allowed ownership over their own mind.

When Cheryl decides she has no choice but to be with Jason, she gives Jughead Jones her little spider brooch, in part, because she feels bad for mocking his little rat daemon for so long. Secretly, she admired him, admired the tenacity, the stubborn survivor evident in his Ella’s form. Everything she wanted to be, but couldn’t.

It is Oberon himself who betrays their awful little secret. When she claws her way through the ice, to try to freeze this heartbreak out of her, he shifts into a fox and screams and screams and screams. Cheryl ignores him, slips into the water, and as the water pulls her away farther than any bond should stretch the screaming turns to pain. Cheryl has always heard you hear sweet music, just before you drown. All she heard was Oberon’s screams, her own, and Archie’s fists pounding into the ice above her.

Archie carries her back to Thornhill, Oberon, a mouse, curled up on his golden retriever’s back. They insist on leaving Jughead behind as they leave for the Jubilee, to “look after her.” Cheryl pretends to sleep.

And Jughead talks. He tells her: “It’s not your fault. I promise you, it is not your fault. I understand…. shitty parents.” And he tells her: “I understand that what we know about never scratches the surface of the shit that’s happened.” And he tells her: “And I just wanted to say, to let you know, that it’s not your fault, that they’ve alienated you from your own soul to the point you can’t figure out who you are.” And he even tells her: “You don’t have to worry. Secret’s safe with us. I know you don’t want me here. And I’ll leave, but only if you promise me you won’t hurt yourself. And I’ll stay, if you ask me too.”

And Cheryl ponders a minute, a hundred thousand options twirling and swirling through her mind and she croaks out, her voice sounding as if she hasn’t spoken in a thousand years or more: “Please go. I’ll be fine. I have so much I need to _do_.” She lays there, until she hears the sound of his boots safely down the stairs and out the door.

That night Cheryl sets Thornhill ablaze. Cheryl knows how to attract attention to redirect it, and she knows her symbolism.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a text to my partner when writing the first fic about how Cheryl was to pin down because she never has a stable sense of identity in the show, bouncing from an abusive home to conversion therapy to a gang to a cult to trying to recreate an idyllic version of that abusive home with a corpse.  
> Now, I don't think there's anything in His Dark Materials canon that says any sort of late settlement can happen but like, Cheryl doesn't know herself, because she's been prevented from knowing herself her entire life. That must do something to a person. I debated adding Jughead in here but I decided to because I might have plans for him in a later fic.


End file.
